Play Diplomacy Online

This is the place for games which are currently being created and developed, and where the designer is listening to feedback from other players. The game is not ready to play, and the designers are not looking for sign-ups - indeed, they may have no intention of GMing the game themselves when it is finished. But your input is welcome!

Forum rules
Despite repeated requests, designers are still regularly posting maps of several hundred Kb size. All maps should be under 80Kb and preferable 50-60 maximum. Unless you have prior permission, any larger map will be removed without warning.

EDIT: Jump to the next page to see the rules writeup (draft). Everything is still a bit in flux, but you should be able to get a good flavor of things.

Original Post...

What variants take place in the late 1980's or early 1990's? And are they any good?

I know only of Modern, which roughly gets the map correct but doesn't take into account any of the political realities of that time.Modern at vDiplomacy

I'm thinking through what might be good for a post-Cold War variant, and I think the approach should be to have the game put the focus on different countries than what normally show up as Diplomacy powers, with a focus on Eastern Europe, the Balkans, the Middle East, and Central Asia.

Start Year: 1991Players: 10Potential Player Powers:

Poland

Kazakhstan

Yugoslavia (or just Serbia)

Iran

Syria

Saudi Arabia

Egypt

Romania

Czechoslovakia

Israel

Pakistan

Ukraine

Does this sound appealing to the PbF crowd? Or would the lack of the traditional France/Germany/Britain/Russia bunch turn folks away?

Last edited by NoPunIn10Did on 15 Feb 2017, 17:55, edited 2 times in total.

This is a great idea! I think shifting the focus to the more unstable regions of the world during that time would be really intriguing. Also, if you had an interest in adding additional rules, this setting would seem conducive to "interference" by non-player superpowers. I don't know what that would look like but it could also be intriguing.

How are the European powers going to interact with, say, Kazakhstan? Is Russia made of neutral SCs, or impassible? I'd almost advocate for having Russia as a power whose larger number of SCs would be counterbalanced by having more neighbors. Similar thing to a lesser extent with Turkey. Impassible works for both but could make interaction harder between regions, and making them neutral doesn't really approximate reality.

Subotai45 wrote:How are the European powers going to interact with, say, Kazakhstan? Is Russia made of neutral SCs, or impassible? I'd almost advocate for having Russia as a power whose larger number of SCs would be counterbalanced by having more neighbors. Similar thing to a lesser extent with Turkey. Impassible works for both but could make interaction harder between regions, and making them neutral doesn't really approximate reality.

I actually have some thoughts on that. I'm going to base it on the DP-voting model, whereby there are neutral units whose actions are voted for secretly by players. Those neutral units never leave their home provinces until they're dislodged and destroyed.

The difference will be that some of the powers, like NATO (at least most of it) and Russia, will be permanent neutral units. They won't be able to be dislodged.

This would allow them to "meddle" in the affairs of the player powers throughout the entirety of the game without just becoming the player powers' easily-removed fodder.

This is mostly a color test, since I haven't broken down internal borders or marked SCs yet. You can see most of the unit designs, though.

Player Powers:

Egypt

Ethiopia

Iran

Kazakhstan

Pakistan

Poland

Romania

Ukraine

Saudi Arabia

Yugoslavia

NATO, Russia, Israel, and India are all non-player-controlled powers that players will "negotiate" with using DP. Several of the tan or brown territories will contain Minor Powers that can also be negotiated with (and conquered).

I'm using Wings in this variant too (represented on the map by the chevrons), but I think I have an implementation for them figured out that will fit the theme of the game.

Subotai45 wrote:I love the setting and I'll probably play if you run it here, but those are a lot of neutral armies. How many DPs do people get? Is that the number next to the power name?

Each player gets DP equal to the number of units they have on the map, up to a max of 4.Each player can get one additional DP if they control at least one Oil SC (not yet marked on that map), making the real maximum 5.

Regardless of the above, every player (including each eliminated player) gets a minimum of 1 DP.

The numbers in the chart represent points. In this variant, each SC is worth either 1 or 2 points. Your unit count is half your point total rounded up. As such, powers with 5 or 6 points start with 3 units, and powers with 3 or 4 points start with 2 units.

There are lots of minor powers on the board (in different shades of brown), but the board will have fewer units overall as the game progresses, since many of those minor units occupy 1-point SCs.